Movie idea: A Burrito, a Life
A BURRITO, A LIFE
A Mexican crime boss has just been diagnosed with cancer. He is told he has less than a month to live. He is at home, completely devastated, when some of his goons come in with a beautiful woman. They tell him they were going to collect a large debt from a local burrito chef and he had no money. His daughter was there and the goons grabbed her and told the man that if he ever wanted to see her again then he better repay his debt.
The crime boss looks pensive. Then he looks like he's getting a crazy idea, but it's sombre crazy, not fun.
We see the burrito chef in his restaurant that same night and there's stuff flung all over the place. The restaurant is a mess and he's talking to the police who are like "Sorry buddy, don't get your hopes up," cuz the crime boss runs the town. The police leave and the chef is cleaning up when he gets a call from the crime boss.
"I have your daughter. I am coming to your restaurant. Turn on your oven."
The crime boss arrives and enters the restaurant with some especially choice goons. He tells the chef that his daughter is in the car, and she will be set free and his debt cancelled, on one condition: the chef must make the ultimate burrito. If he refuses or makes an inadequate burrito, the daughter dies and the guy still needs to repay his debt.
There's some more dialogue but then the movie gets down to it, the guy making the burrito. The movie up to this point has taken maybe 15 minutes, now it's an hour and 45 minutes of the chef making a burrito, intercut with reflections on his life, flashbacks to important moments related to his daughter and his burrito-making. His flashbacks and imagination do not represent the actual passage of time in the movie, the movie makes it clear that the process of making the burrito doesn't take an hour and 45 minutes. They can have the guy look at his watch, if there's really no other way.
All this time a massive storm has been getting progressively crazier, and just as the chef opens his oven and delicately places the burrito in and realizes with a shock that he forgot to turn the oven on after the crime boss called, there is a flash of lightning and the power goes out.
The goons have flashlights and soon beams are shooting around the room feverishly. The mood is of dawning horror. The end of the movie is lit entirely by flashlights. A flashlight is right on the face of the chef and he is crying and like "I beg you, please, let me have another chance, please, spare my daughter's life." The crime boss's face is intermittently lit as goons walk around, obviously it's not as important to point a flashlight at his face as it is to point one at that chef. When we see him, the crime boss looks upset and is murmuring inaudibly. The door bursts open and more goons come in with the daughter and more flashlights, they saw the lights go out and wanted to make sure everything was OK. The father and daughter scream and say how they love each other and stuff, he's like "I won't let anything happen to you!" and she's like "Daddy! I'm so scared!"
Finally the crime boss speaks audibly. "You... you have failed me." We see his face and he's looking off into space, then we see his face again and he looks up at the chef who is crying and begging some more. We see him look at the daughter who is completely losing her shit. Some of the less experienced goons shift their weight nervously. "Bring it to me... bring me... the burrito." The chef looks at the boss and the goons uncertainly for a moment but instinctively grasps the enormity of what is happening and opens the oven and delicately takes the burrito out. He brings it over to the boss and hands it to him like a baby. The boss is still only lit intermittently as the chef backs away. There is about a minute of the boss cloaked in mostly darkness holding the burrito. Near the end of the minute some of the intermittent beams catch some tears falling. The crime boss says "Go" and the chef runs to his daughter. The last shot is of the door, still from the inside, the father is running out and tugging the daughter but she stops in the doorway and takes one last look inside, then runs out into the night.
The End
Themes: family, debt, cooking, nostalgia, kidnapping, terminal illness, Mexico